This week’s small pleasures #373

Thistles and Kiwis

So here we are in February already, and summer continues with blue skies and sunshine – well, not all the time (there was a rather loud thunderstorm on Saturday evening for a start…), but it still feels like summer. I have taken today, Monday, off on holiday as tomorrow is Waitangi Day, the national day of New Zealand. Thus with not working on Wednesdays, I have given myself an extra long weekend. There are a myriad of resources explaining Te Tiriti o Waitangi and why, this year, it is going to be interesting to see what happens – if you are interested try this article from The Spinoff or the New Zealand History website.

So today after a few domestic chores, I headed into town for a couple of errands and lunch. Back in October, there was a fire in the abandoned Toomath’s building on Ghuznee Street, near the corner of Cuba Street. The heritage building was deemed unsafe and pulled down, and there is now a gap site where it once stood. You can see that one thing remains – a fireplace, complete with tiles. Always pays to look up….you never know what you might spot.

In the basket

In the Wonky Box this week, apart from 2 beetroot that were swiftly handed over to a colleague at work, was a cucumber (always welcome at this time of year), avocados, caulilini (lovely roasted), green beans, baby carrots, courgettes and a lonely ear of sweetcorn. A good box this week, and as I need to cancel next week’s, I also asked if we could not get any more beetroot and they said yes – so a win all round. We had half the green beans with tarakihi (a fish) and potatoes on Saturday, and the other half with the carrots will be eaten tonight with pork fillet.

I picked up some more sweetcorn, yellow peaches, lemons, carrots and expensive but oh so tasty heirloom tomatoes. There was also some Argentinian chorizo – will report back on those later. And no, I am not sure what makes them Argentinian!

In the kitchen

It is still very much about salads as side dishes. I topped the heirloom tomatoes and the lonely ear of corn with burrata and basil as a second side with Saturday’s fish, polishing the leftovers off on Sunday. Last week’s little turnips and carrots were both roasted and tossed with herbs and olive oil, and there was a dill loaded potato salad to have with Polish sausages one evening. Naturally, there was also several green salads too.

This week’s sandwiches

So to this week’s sandwiches, starting with an excellent toasted reuben sandwich at Pickle & Pie on Wednesday. On Friday, I popped over the the cafe at the library, and had this enormous sandwich with mortadella, olives, greens and mozzarella. It was far too big, and defeated me I am afraid, though it was extremely tasty. Today I went to my favourite sandwich place in the city, Fred’s, for one of their excellent tuna melts.

Cinema

On Sunday evening, we went to the cinema to see preview showing of Force of Nature: The Dry 2. Many of you out there will have seen The Dry or read the Jane Harper book, set in the Australian outback. I loved both the film and book so was looking forward to the film of the second book to feature Aaron Falk, a Melbourne based police officer who investigates financial crimes. I am glad to say I was not disappointed, and as with The Dry, the landscape is a central part of the plot. Eric Bana is great as Falk, and I wonder if there will be a third film. Let’s see!

Simple things

  • Enjoying blue skies and sunshine.
  • Starting French classes – oui!
  • Having lots of time to read on Saturday.
  • Finding a perfect white shirt at Kow Tow today.
  • Baking and eating scones on Saturday (see the featured image at the top of the post).
  • Stopping to look at this street art with shadows on Cuba Mall.

What were your small pleasures this week? Here are some other blog posts from a few fellow bloggers looking at the good things in life. Also entered in the weekend coffee share hosted by Natalie.

Thistles and Kiwis is a Wellington, New Zealand based blog written by Barbara, who likes cats, summer, good food and pretends to garden.

You can find Thistles and Kiwis on Facebook, and also on Instagram @thistlesandkiwis. If you want to get in touch, email me on lofgren@thistlesandkiwis.com

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Published by Thistles and Kiwis

Loves summer, sunshine and cats. Beginner gardener, likes eating, cooking and reading about food

37 Comments

  2. It remains very hot in South Africa and salads are the easiest dishes to both make and consume in the heat. I enjoy visiting the blogs you mention and thank you for including mine.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. As Anne has said I enjoy catching up with your blog especially giving us suggestions on movies, books and food, blogs and news on Wellington where I have an old teaching friend!
    Enjoy your days off.

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  7. Those salads look wonderful! We used to get a mystery box of veggies and fruit each week and I loved seeing what surprises I’d find inside (a few I had to google and didn’t even recognize!) but we ate so well. I was kind of disappointed when they moved towards having you pick out what fruits and veggies you wanted; while I liked that we no longer received things we knew we didn’t like I no longer had that same encouragement to try new things we had never seen or heard of.

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  8. I’m going to echo some of the other comments: those salads look great. Another week with only one ear of corn? What the heck! Perhaps the corn crop hasn’t been good this year? That skate-boarding dog made me smile. I’d never heard of The Dry. I will put it on my list.

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    1. I’m not sure why they only put in one ear of corn – bit strange when sometimes we get two leeks….. Last year the harvest was poor because of Cyclone Gabriel, but there are lots in the shops this year. Think you would enjoy The Dry,

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  11. I love your weekly posts with the yummy food photos. I love Jane Harper novels too, but haven’t seen the films. Have you read Garry Disher books? They are pretty good too.

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  16. I love that street art – how cute!

    And how wild is that chimney!! Our world is amazing when you see it stripped back like that. All the things we never think about….#WeekendCoffeeshare

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  18. Hi Barbara,

    I loved that shot of the single fireplace, now forced to remain outside and has lost both it’s room and ability to warm anyone or anything.

    There’s a ghost story in this somewhere.

    Cheers and Blessings.

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  19. Happy National Day to you! We celebrated Samernas Nationaldag earlier this week. Our towns library is amazing and provided us with a suitcase full of interesting things connected to their culture, the children absolutely loved it! Have a wonderful new week!

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  20. The fresh veggies and lunches look scrumptious. I enjoyed reading The Dry and other books by Jane Harper. Do you take French lessons online or in person? Thank you for the mention and for your weekend coffee share.

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